


Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other

by ApprenticedMagician



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Brothers to Enemies, Chosen one trope, Gen, Heroes and Villains, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Katelyn/Aaron Minyard - Freeform, Love at First Sight, Mistaken Identity, Multi, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard - Freeform, Non-Chronological, to Friends??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 09:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20289496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApprenticedMagician/pseuds/ApprenticedMagician
Summary: This is what happens when twins are born on the Eve of the Prophecy of the Chosen One; when one is Chosen and the other is Not.





	Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strikerkudo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikerkudo/gifts).

> My exchange gift to [kenny](http://strikerkudo.tumblr.com)! I chose to go along with your 'unwilling chosen ones must save the world for the sake of love' prompt, but it got away on me and turned into this unresolved angst fest. I hope you enjoy it regardless!

Collisions weren’t generally how Andrew liked making first impressions but, well, it’s not exactly as if he _knew _some idiot would come out of nowhere, sprinting for his life with the unfortunate timing to line up with the heavy backswing of the lacrosse racquet Andrew was using to bash a car he was 99.99% sure belonged to the famous (pompous) hero, Kevin Day.

A flurry of yelps and yips knocked them both to the ground where they were bruised, unbalanced, bewildered, and one of them severely winded.

Andrew, who had breath within him, recovered first. “What the _hell_ are you doing?!”

All Andrew could see was an enormous hoodie heaving for breath on the ground, large enough to fit another human inside with room to spare. The wheezing pile of grey folds glared up at him with eyes that burned like blue fire. “Not…” he winced, clearly pained, “my fault…”

“Ohhh!” Andrew said, mocking loud enough to ignore the voice in his head that was checking the idiot against every physical fantasy he’d ever had. (Who knew his type was homeless and hopeless?) “Was it not? My apologies, moron, I didn’t realize that it was _I _who flung myself to the pavement. Or maybe you _were _looking where you were going and decided flying into my racquet was on your bucket list?”

“Is that what I hit…” the kid mumbled and looked underneath at the stick he had accidentally gutted himself with. “Wait, are you wrecking your car?”

“’s my business,” Andrew said, brushing off his own foolish behaviour. Just because he knew it was a petty and stupid thing to do, didn’t mean he couldn’t do it anyway. “Give it back.”

The kid rolled his eyes, but untucked himself with careful movements and palmed the racquet to offer it back when he felt something gritty and everything stopped. His eyes had frozen over the embossed letters _A. Minyard._

Andrew felt every vertebrae of his spine stiffen to stone.

“I know you,” the boy breathed, voice changed now that it rang with awe instead of disdain.

Andrew shook his head. “No, you don’t.”

“I do,” he insisted, fiery eyes roving over every detail of Andrew’s face. His open admiration resurged an old, dark desire within Andrew – the temptation to self-harm, to scar himself for distinction and identity. Maybe on his face this time. So that no one would ever mistake him again for something he’s not.

“You’re the Chosen One,” he said, brows bending while Andrew felt his skin pale, his palms sweat, his lips shake. “Aren’t you?”

Andrew couldn’t answer before the boy was begging, “Please, you have to help me.”

* * *

The thing about bearing twins on the eve of the Prophecy of the Chosen One, is that you spark a global panic.

Everyone who already had their eyes on Tilda those many years ago, suddenly also clamoured over her recently laboured body just to donate two cents worth of opinions and distress and questions she couldn’t even begin to answer.

How had this happened? Was it a divine message? Or worse, a warning or threat?! Had a nefarious villain interfered with her pregnancy and shot her with a duplication ray?! Was Tilda secretly a villain this whole time who was intent on seeing the world destroyed?!? What was to be done with the other child? _Which one _was the other child?!

And worst of all, came the question from Luther, her older brother: How could she live with herself after having deceived the whole world into thinking she was special? Had the city granted her a private manor and household staff for nothing?

* * *

Years ago, Andrew had asked, “Mom? Why does everyone treat Aaron like he’s special?”

“What have I said about talking with your mouth full?” She had snapped.

Hastily, Andrew swallowed and repeated his question.

“Because he _is _special,” Tilda explained, going faintly starry-eyed, like everyone else did. “Aaron is the Chosen One, granted with the strength of a dozen men, destined to save the world someday from great evil.”

Andrew picked his nose. “Says who?”

“Stop that!” She smacked his hand, brought a tissue to his nose and rubbed it red. “The stars say so. The stars and…Old prophets.”

Fighting her off, Andrew huffed, “What am I gonna do while he’s saving the world?”

Tilda scowled, which meant the time for questions was up. “Eat your lunch in silence.”

He was only five, but he knew she hadn’t answered his question.

* * *

Though the world at large had far from agreed on anything, the most generally accepted consensus was that one of the twins was Chosen and the other was Not. The matter of which twin was which was a debate that lasted days, back when the problem was fresh.

Andrew’s read the forum posts. Aaron’s watched the panels of “experts”. For every renowned mathematician who had claimed that the firstborn – and thus, Aaron – must be the Prophecy’s intended babe, there had been an equally fervent astronomer who insisted that the relevant celestial bodies weren’t in perfect position until 00:03 – and thus, Andrew, the younger twin by all of three minutes, was the Prophecy’s destined. Furthermore, there were innumerable conspiracy theories that either both or neither of them were the Prophecy’s referent.

Not that the choosings of all those strangers mattered much to the boys in question.

Tilda’s choice mattered a great deal more. Both had asked her for the story on separate occasions. The tone of the tellings were different to each son, but the bare bones were this: two week after their birth, she was asked to put the debate to rest and Choose.

Between the son who had been her miracle, the thing that finally made her _special_… and the one who had interrupted that miracle with mass confusion and global distress that maybe everyone had got it wrong and she was just plain _ordinary?_

No one said all choices were hard. Not even the important ones.

* * *

“I need your help.”

The words came out of Andrew like shredded glass, cutting what pride he had into tattered ribbons. Sometimes it feels like he’s never stood whole in front of his brother, only ever a broken piece who had never fit. He ignored the memories that proved it wasn’t always that way.

He had plenty of time to do so, because Aaron paused, not even drinking down all the water he should be before Sifu Wymack had him in training again. But Aaron scanned his brother’s face, his posture, and Andrew could hardly blame him for being suspicious. Andrew has asked for very little of him in the past, and nothing since they were children. They’ve barely even spoken these last few years.

“With what?” Aaron finally asked, openly curious.

Andrew hesitated, in part because he’s sure Sifu Wymack was eavesdropping and he wasn’t sure it would be a good thing for him to overhear that Andrew had squirreled away the son of the world’s most notorious villain and wanted Aaron to help protect him from the world’s most organized and dangerous association of villains.

He hesitated too long. Aaron huffed impatiently. “I get that you’re not busy, but my schedule is a little different. So, if you’ll excuse me?”

“Someone thinks I’m the Chosen One.”

Aaron’s whole body seemed to sharpen, something old and angry colouring him. “Doesn’t sound like a problem. Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve taken advantage of the fact you look just like him.”

Andrew bit back the apology that wanted to spill out when Aaron stormed off. He knew it wouldn't be accepted or appreciated because nothing about Andrew ever was.

* * *

The thing about being Unchosen was, no one really cared what Andrew did or didn’t do because all their caring was spent on Aaron.

When he was twelve, he ran away from home. He made it ten days before his snack food ran out and all his clothes smelled like garbage. When he arrived home, no one asked where he had been or what he had done to get himself so stinky, because Aaron had outgrown his old tutors and new ones needed to be hired.

When he was fifteen, he used a fake ID several times to pass off as Chosen Aaron to gain access to VIP lounges and high-end restaurants, then left without paying, not even with an autograph, and no one ever said boo about it – not even the most offended waitstaff or the most stringent hosts. Later, Andrew found online reviews of places he had visited and saw that business had boomed wherever the Chosen One had been serviced, complete with stickers boasting _Chosen’s Choice Award_. He stopped going after that.

When he was seventeen, he killed a man who hurt him. It was an accident. Then he killed four who hurt his cousin, never imagining he would win. In the privacy of his detention cell, as he tested his strength on the walls, the bars, and the other delinquents, he plotted to kill more – uncle Luther, pastor Cadence, bully Valerie, doctor Proust – but once he’d been freed and dropped off at home, no one asked what was going on in his mind or wrong in his life. He was told to leave the fighting and the justice to his brother, his ‘older’ brother who’s Strong and Good and knows best what’s Right.

But when he was twenty, he’d stumbled upon a pretty pipedream, wrapped in an overlarge hoodie that can’t hide the secrets he’s guarding or the features that are sharper than the indifference everyone always treats Andrew with. Who looks at him with hope and expectation and Andrew had no one who cared about him enough to warn him about the dangers of falling in love.

The boy’s name was Nathaniel Wesninski. He asked for the help of the Chosen One and, for love - good _God, _for love at _first sight - _Andrew will get it for him.

* * *

Aaron hissed when he pulled off his shirt that night. Katelyn winced in sympathy, kneeling on the bed in her nightgown and ready with a cream to soothe the ache and speed the healing.

“I see Wymack didn’t pull any punches today,” she said, drawing Aaron to the mattress. He went easily, swayed as always by her softness and care. She was the only person who had never asked what she could do for him – she had just gone and done it, without expecting him to repay her somehow or grant her special favours.

“Wasn’t him,” Aaron admitted, softening all of his guards now that Katelyn’s hands were on him. “You wouldn’t even see the bruises if Wilds hadn’t tagged in for the afternoon.”

Katelyn made a noise of understanding. “Danielle certainly earns her titles. What has she won? Two world championships?”

“Three, this year.”

She grinned. “I hadn’t realized this year’s championship already happened.”

He grinned back. “It hasn’t. But you know she’ll win.” She laughed and his grin melted away, mind turning back to the day’s other unusual event. “Andrew came to me today.”

Katelyn’s attention perked. She was the only one Aaron still talked about Andrew with, and she knew it had troubled him that they had remained so far apart for so long. “What happened?” she asked.

Aaron squirmed, and not just because she started kneading out an awkward knot. “He was vague. I got pissed. Told him off and he just stood there saying nothing.”

He could _hear _Katelyn rolling her eyes. “Yes, I’m sure all that hostility made you utterly approachable.” She smacked his hair a little. “You could have heard him out, maybe offered to talk later in private. Wymack might’ve made him nervous.”

That didn’t make much sense. “Why would he hide?”

“I don’t know,” she kissed his cheek and it felt over-charitable, “why don’t you go ask him?”

He didn’t let on that his chronic self-doubt flared up worse around Andrew lately. Even the thought of shuffling to his door sent his stomach churning and nothing in him wanted to face that earliest failure.

But Katelyn had always made him brave, ever since she was brought in to treat his wounds and assess his strength. He could always afford an effort to impress her.

* * *

The walk to Andrew’s wing of the manor always had Aaron feel like he was about to be punished at any moment, despite the fact he’d been able to overpower any of his old tutors for years.

The hallway was dusty, as though it wasn’t cleaned as regularly as the rest of the house, which Aaron knew to be a lie.

He knocked, his knuckles rapping out a secret childhood rhythm by force of habit. Aaron nearly started at himself, not realizing he had remembered. “Andrew?” he called, knocking again, normally this time.

No answer. If Andrew was sulking, no power on earth would stop Aaron from clobbering him.

“I’m coming in,” he threatened, which was a fair enough warning before tearing both door and hinges from the doorframe. He needn’t have bothered – the door had been unlocked.

“Mother of hell!” someone shouted. “He’s not here, you psycho!”

Aaron peered through the plaster dust to see what looked to be a homeless squatter, dark skinned and drowning in clothes with hair like fire. In no time Aaron had him pinned, ready to threaten suffocation if he didn’t explain real soon.

“Where is he?”

“I can’t tell you – _gahk! _Stop! It’s not safe for anyone but him!”

“_Where?_”

“Okay, okay! I have information about the Moriyama Coalition – he’s gone to scout their headquarters and rescue my friend.”

“You escaped Moriyama?” He nodded. “Then your friend is already dead. You’ve sent my brother to suicide!”

“No! He’s a dozen men strong! Jean can hold on if he can get there in time!”

“Get _where_ in time.” He almost missed the address sputtered out between chokes and he wasn’t any happier when he realized the warehouse was near the abandoned loading docks. If Andrew was killed, he’d be tossed to the water and never be found.

“You over-idolize,” Aaron sneered, throwing the boy aside. “Your lying Chosen’s going to get himself killed.”

But only if Aaron couldn’t get there in time.

* * *

The thing about being Chosen was, everyone always cared what choices Aaron made, especially the ones concerning his Unchosen ‘little’ brother.

When he was seven, he once insisted that Andrew wasn’t that much littler than him, even though their mom had put him in a grade behind. He told everyone in class that Andrew was his twin, not just his brother, and punched Valerie Evans when she said Andrew had seemed pretty little when he was wetting his pants in the girl’s bathroom. Aaron had still been yelling when the teachers pulled him off, but he didn’t get in any trouble. They just pat his head to calm him down and praised him for having such love in his heart for someone so unspecial.

When he was nine, he used to skip his private “How to Save the World” classes to play with Andrew instead and teach him all the kickass combat he learned the day before. Whenever he was caught, he was scolded for wasting time and called an immature brat who didn’t understand what was on the line. Finally, one tutor locked Andrew in the attic before class, even though Aaron told her Andrew was terrified of the dark and high places. She promised she would let him out afterwards and never do it again if he remained studious. Aaron never snuck out again.

When he was ten, he went crying to Andrew’s bed across their shared room, after a horrible nightmare where he saved everyone in the world but his brother. When they were found the next morning by their uncle, curled close around one another just as they had been in utero, Luther flew into a rage, startling them awake when he ripped Andrew from Aaron’s arms and onto the carpeted floor. The next week he pushed and pushed and pushed (nearly harder than Tilda had, when birth first separated the boys) until Tilda gave in and put them in separate rooms, explaining that Aaron was a big boy now and remaining too attached was going to keep him weak.

By the time he was twelve, after each little concession he made, Aaron had pushed the Unchosen away. Pushed him in the dirt, called him little, called him a bother and a distraction, and all other manner of unkind, untrue names. Adults said it was for the best, but Aaron only knew that Andrew was the mirror image of how heartbroken Aaron had felt when he said to his face that Andrew was nobody important.

* * *

It would be comical how easy Andrew had been to spot, if his very life weren’t in danger. He didn’t even flail effectively when Aaron yanked him back behind a shipping container and hissed, “_Get down._”

Andrew threw a weak punch before he realized, “Aaron?” Then he threw a stronger one. Aaron didn’t let on that it smart to catch it.

“You and I are going to have a sit down conversation, by which I mean I will sit on you until you promise me you will _never _do anything this stupid again!”

Andrew’s hackles rose. “Oh, and what should I do instead? Send every lad in need and damsel in distress your way?”

“You come!” He shook him, for emphasis. “To me! You do not try to take on Moriyama yourself! This is not your fight!”

“_Nothing _is mine! Not the fame, or the glory, or the strength, not even my own face! I am not a child you can have locked away in the attic anymore – you don’t get to choose the fights I take.”

He was struck dumb for a second, at the implication that Aaron could have ever ordered Andrew to be locked out of the way. But how could he protest? It’s true that it had been his fault.

“I’m going in there,” Andrew insisted.

“Oh no you’re not,” Aaron said, fighting the temptation to simply knock Andrew unconscious. “You’re going back home, while _I _investigate the warehouse.”

“_You? _What, alone?!”

“You didn’t exactly leave me time to assemble a team. So yes, _alone_.” He shoved Andrew back, towards the far-off public streets. When Andrew didn’t go, Aaron rolled his eyes and tried, “I’m not an idiot, I won’t engage. The boy’s friend has probably been moved anyway.”

“They couldn’t move quickly. Even that much activity here would have been noticed. He asked _me_ to do this.”

“And now _I’m telling_ _you_ – ugh! Fine. Fine, fine, fine! You stay but you stay _back_ and out of the way or else I’m punching you.”

Andrew mumbled something mocking, then punched Aaron’s bruised shoulder without warning. Aaron gasped, caught by surprise that it hurt worse than even Dan’s hits.

He punched Andrew back. “Bastard.”

Andrew hid his wince well. “Only if you are.”

* * *

Annoyingly, Andrew was right and Aaron was wrong. The warehouse was in the process of being abandoned when they snuck in but they hadn’t made their final getaway yet. The team of eight that remained hadn't stood a chance. Aaron had taken down six by the time the skirmish was over but when he looked, he still counted eight bodies on the floor. Andrew simply shook his knuckles out and ignored the looks that Aaron shot him.

A locked crate in one corner contained jewels, art, and drugs that were likely either smuggled in or to be smuggled out; in another they found a bound and unconscious young man, presumably Jean.

Aaron suggested they get him to Katelyn. Andrew didn’t particularly like the idea of returning home without an actual Moriyama lead but he had no better ideas.

The crate and bodies they left behind were, predictably, cleaned out by the time Aaron sent others to retrieve them.

* * *

“So.” Gods, it wasn’t like Andrew to be so nervous. He thought it must be the adrenaline still coursing through his bloodstream.

“So,” Nathaniel echoed, voice low so they wouldn’t disturb the team looking after Jean in the other room. “You’re not the Chosen One after all.”

A fist clenched and released; the same one that had tonight taken out two men taller and bigger than he was, in the name of the rugged, beautiful stranger in front of him. “Never was.”

“…That’s okay.”

Andrew thought his ears had stopped working right. “It’s what?”

Nathaniel shrugged. “Okay, yeah. I mean, the real Chosen One choked me within three seconds of meeting me and technically, you never lied, just let me assume stuff so… I’ll be keeping you as my Choice. A Chosen One of my own to help me take down Moriyama.”

“I don’t think it works like that.”

He smiled; the first smile Andrew had seen that made his heart skip. “It works for me.”

* * *

When Aaron said he wanted to speak privately, Andrew more expected to be sat upon than asked to join a strike team.

“I don’t understand,” he said, in quite the understatement.

Aaron didn’t look like he understood what he was doing either. “I saw the way you looked at him.” He wouldn’t use Nathaniel’s name. “Is there an attic high enough to stop you from going after the Coalition, if he asks you to do it?”

An old terror swept through Andrew’s body. The feeling of anonymous things crawling over him in the dark, falling over obstacles he couldn’t see and hurting himself, crying out where no one could find him, week after week so that he’d never interrupt Aaron’s private classes, never mind that he never _had_ before.

“You can try,” he threatened, fists curling and ready to tear through walls and doors and anything else that tried to trap him.

Aaron eyed his hands. “Won’t be necessary.” Then, after a small break, followed, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Too much like regret, too little like an apology. Andrew had nothing to say. Aaron moved on.

“Truth is, I need anyone I can trust. Katelyn’s either left or been captured,” he ignored Andrew’s startled interjection, “and I can’t have Moriyama knowing we’re on to him. If she was a spy, he'll know what we already do, which means we need to move fast before he plants another one. If she's a hostage... then we need to move faster.”

“Aaron…” For the first time that night, Andrew took close stock of his brother. Saw the hair wild with sweat and stressful hands, saw the tight jaw holding back the hurt he could see trembling through his spine.

“They left this,” a tossed piece of cloth, embossed with the Moriyama raven. “No sign of a struggle. No sign of her.”

Andrew examined the cloth closely. He had never liked or disliked Katelyn much before. Now he hated her, for making his brother weaker than ever. “We take down the Coalition?”

Aaron nodded. “Down to the ground. You, me, and the strength of a dozen men.”


End file.
